About Angela Wilson
Location: Midwest
Occupation: Web Producer/Freelance Writer
Bio: I love to read - and write - and surf. My FAV genres include mysteries, romantic suspense and thrillers. I'm finally working on my own thriller (under a pen name) and writing a book on marketing/PR for authors. I blog about writing at www.wickedwordsmith.com, and have accounts on various sites. You can find me on MySpace, Facebook and more by visiting www.angelawilson.net.
Posts: 222
More from this author
Alma is a smart young woman accepted into Harvard for the spring semester. In the final years of high school, the aspiring novelist has come to hate her life. She is not popular – even with her billionaire father’s connections – she has few friends and she is not very pretty. She buries herself in books and stops talking to her mother. One day, she discovers a letter from the grandfather she never knew existed, a man who lives in Mexico. When she discovers her life is built on the lies of her mother, she runs away from her affluent Texas home to find her grandfather south of the border.
But young women are juicy prey in the towns she visits, and Alma is nearly raped. That doesn’t stop her. She goes back to Texas turns herself into a boy – at least, superficially. Just before she goes back to Mexico, she hooks up with some raunchy men (who have no idea she is not a teenage boy) hunting for drugs, drinks and a little female companionship before a wedding.
Through these events, Alma is introduced to the seedy underbelly of Mexican culture – whorehouses, drugs, rape – and grows up fast.
Meanwhile, her parents are searching for her by using her Internet searches and emails to track her movements. Her mother is a dark-skinned Latina married to a mouthy, cocky Texas businessman who wants to ignore her heritage as much as Hermelinda – until it excites him in bed. Hermelinda – Lindy to the superficial families in her circle of friends – has spent her life running away from the poverty and pain of her Mexican heritage. She is terrified for her daughter and just wants to find her. Along the way, she learns that her husband isn’t the pot of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow she’d thought he was when she met him, and finds she can never, never run from her past.
Guide is one of those books I would never pick up for myself. As I read it, I thought to myself, Someone published this? More important, Someone will pay to read this? That’s not to say that Martin isn’t a great writer. He spent five years pulling this 238-page book together. Some turn-of-phrases and descriptions make you sit back and say, Wow. But the story is sometimes disjointed in the storytelling. Alma and Hermelinda are sympathetic characters, but not compelling enough to leave a permanent mark in the average readers’ minds. Literary fiction minds will be more inclined to remember their journey.
Martin’s style is blunt, unapologetic as it sifts through the thoughts and actions of the Price family as the world goes chaotic around them. Still, there are times when it feels like the book is standing still and the reader wonders if the journey will ever end.
